


Things Lost

by nothingeverlost



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Ending, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-25
Updated: 2012-10-25
Packaged: 2017-11-17 01:12:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/545878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothingeverlost/pseuds/nothingeverlost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Lost, are we?” he asked, appreciating the irony.  They were all lost, and most of them in more than one way.  He, in the last months, had begun to think there was nothing but ‘lost.’</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things Lost

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s note: An alternate to the sword fight scene in A Land Without Magic, with blatantly stolen dialoge. 
> 
> This is going to hurt.

He waited. Waited centuries, for something that would never happen, and then waited hours for something that would. Rumpelstiltskin sat on a rotting log in the middle of the Infinite Forest and waited for the deal of a lifetime.

“Lost, are we?” he asked, appreciating the irony. They were all lost, and most of them in more than one way. He, in the last months, had begun to think there was nothing but ‘lost.’

“What are you doing here?” Charming was no more pleased to see him then he ever was, poor boy. The shepherd, though, had all the bearing of a prince, demanding answers. It was rather amusing; he took to the role far better than he’d taken to the man that had been his brother’s father.

“I’m just here to help.” It was, indeed, an almost altruistic gesture he was making. Offering much and asking for so little. Charming, and he thought of the princeling as that in his mind, because Snow was a clever girl and he liked the irony, wouldn’t understand the true cost of the bargain until too late.

“Well, no need. I’ll be fine.” With a look over his shoulder he was ready to stride off, to find a way back to his Snow. It was a dedication that Rumpelstiltskin appreciated. Too bad the princess wouldn’t be waiting for him, even if he could find his way out.

“No, I don’t think so. This is the Infinite Forest. There’s no way out. Well, except… my way.” He always had a way. A trick, a trap, a deal. He’d spent centuries learning and decades working plans that were just cogs in the grand design. His way had been so perfect. Until Belle. Until True Love.

“I want nothing from you.” The stubborn fool was so self assured and bloody good. It must be weary, he had to think, to spend so much time and energy on doing the good and right thing. Pointless.

“Not even this?” The glint of light against the metal, when he snapped a finger and made the object appear, was far stronger than the faint sun coming through the trees could have produced. 

“I don’t understand.” Charming looked at him in confusion.

“It’s very simple, dearie. This is the answer to your two worst problems. People problems. Let’s call it human pest control.” He giggled at the macabre thought. Pests indeed.

“Regina.” He almost spat out the name, like it was bile or venom. The Queen’s dungeon had not endeared her to him, apparently.

“She’s one, indeed.” Regina, who had been so gleeful to share the news of Belle’s death. Regina, who was so close to deciding to cast the curse. He understood now that he couldn’t let that happen. Belle was dead and Bae was lost, and both would hate what he’d spent so long planning.

It would be enough to make sure Regina paid, for Belle. And for the others. The woman gleefully sent children to their deaths; he’d let that go long enough.

“And the second?” Charming took a leary step forward. Rum, in the blink of an eye, stood two paces before him.

“Rumpelstiltskin, scourge to all that know my name and most dangerous man in the realms.” He bowed, low and formal. The master of introductions. 

“The perfect villain to your hero, my fair haired prince. Imagine how the citizens of this land will bow to you, when they learn that you’ve rid them of not one but two of their greatest fears.” His was the greater power, of course, but Regina had never learned that there was as much virtue in subtlety as in drama.

“You want to tell me how to rid the land of you.” The shepherd was still in the prince, the eyeroll more farmhand than nobility.

“For the right price, indeed I will.” If he’d had any doubts about the plan he might have faltered then. He didn’t.

“The price?”

“The heart of your mother-in-law, burnt in a fire.” Even a woman of Regina’s power couldn’t survive that. Decapitation could be survived. Complete destruction of a heart could not.

“I’m not a murderer. She needs to be punished for her wrongs, not killed.” 

“Such gallantry, your majesty, but I think you’ll change your mind.” With a snap of his fingers an image appeared between them. Snow, in her coffin made of glass, as faithfully reproduced as the images he’d called up of his Belle so often. And just as untouchable.

“I’ll kill you.” The sword came out of its sheath, but the prince could not seem to make himself walk through the image that laid between them. He stared, instead, at his love’s face.

“This is not my doing, dearie. It’s not a threat, it’s what’s already happened. I simply show you the Queen’s work. A fate worse than death; in another forest you princess sleeps, trapped in every nightmare she’s ever had, and worse. A sleeping curse, a poisoned apple, an ending to everything that might have been.” He waved his hand over the image and it vanished. “She had a choice, your Snow. Forever sleep with the promise that the Queen would never harm you, or your death. Regina knew her quarry well.”

“Why should I believe you?” Anger warred with grief on his face. A pain that Rumpelstiltskin knew only too well. A pain that could cripple, or motivate.

“Why should I lie? I’ve never had a need for it, nor do I now. I want what you want.” He played with words carefully, nuanced meanings, shades of truth. But never outright lies. This was hardly the time to start.

“Why do you want Regina dead so badly? What could she have done to you?”

“She took something from me. Something I treasured above all things.” His Belle, so innocent, so trusting. How could he ever have believed her anything other than a pawn in the game between him and the monster he’d created? “Something precious.”

“All this over a theft?”

“Oh, something far more than that.” His Belle, so lost that her only choice was to jump from a tower to avoid more pain. And he hadn’t been there to catch her. “I had but one flicker of light in the ocean of darkness that is my existence, and Regina snuffed it out.”

“She killed someone. Someone you…” The word, so natural when applied to his own feelings for his Snow, seemed impossible for him to say.

“Loved. Even monsters can love, dearie. Regina did as well, once upon a time. Now she can’t stand to see anyone else have what she has lost.” She’d lost her heart long ago; he just needed to make sure Charming finished the job. He needed to kill the monster.

Two of them.

“All I ask is for a promise, from you, that you will personally take Regina’s heart and cast it in flames. In return I give you all the power you need to not only pass through anything she might try to use to stop or fight you. My power, never again in my control.” He took a step closer and held out his hands. In them lay the warm metal of a dagger than none but him had touched for centuries. The dagger that he had once thought would protect his son, and had instead broken him as irrevocably as the war might have. Separated them completely, and even if the curse could find him, the man his son had called ‘papa’ was gone. Lost, so long ago, to magic and fear and hate. And cowardice.

“You would give up your power, in exchange for Regina’s death.” Charming huffed, disbelieving.

“What would you give up, if it meant avenging your True Love?” He knew the man before him, could feel the waves of anger and grief that radiated from a desperate soul. Charming would never understand, not until too late, just how much they had in common. He tossed the dagger up, catching the blade, offering the hilt to the other man. “Take it.”

Charming stared at the proffered weapon as if mesmerised. “What do I…”

“I think you know, dearie. There’s only one thing to do.” He allowed himself just a breath of time to wonder how long things had been leading to this one moment. Since Belle, and her broken promise of forever? Since he’d given a shepherd’s son to a king? Since a miller’s daughter had cried with a fistful of hay? Or perhaps, even, since the skies had turned red with the blood of children, and a poor beggar had offered help in exchange for a meal beside the fire.

“Snow, she’s really…”

“The Sleeping Curse is eternal, and so much worse than death. The poisoned apple is already eaten, the glass coffin even now guarded by seven friends who mourn as they protect.” He spoke the truth, as he always did. He did not mention the kiss that might break the curse. He needed Charming’s despair, not his hope.

“I will agree to your deal. You have my word that Regina’s price for her crimes will be death.” He took the dagger, the shepherd prince, the true noble, the lost lover.

“And I promise that you will have everything you need to fight her and free the kingdom.” And he would have everything he needed as well. For the first time in centuries he would have peace.

Rumpelstiltskin stopped waiting. He stood, calm for the first time in his memory, and met the fate that he had chosen. His last thoughts were not of the man who held the dagger aimed at his heart, but of the two souls he held within, those lost but still loved. It was, in that last moment, enough.


End file.
